Work & Wages – J.K. Ingalls, 3/8/1890

Republished from Lucifer’s sister publication Fair Play

The present disparity in the compensations of men for such service as they respectively contribute to the social good
is so monstrous as to almost paralyze the mind which attempts the comparison. Few men think about the matter at all.
Economists only refer to it in an oracular manner. Moralists and religionists will go so far as to suggest that since God
has given so abundantly to one while he has withheld from another, that the one should accept the matter “as a trust,
and consider himself as a steward of the Lord,” and so disburse or employ it as a fund imposed upon him to test his
discipleship. So far such stewardships have resulted in partial alleviations and in numerous charities, which have
caused perhaps more idleness and poverty than they have remedied. But such palliations still leave us all afloat as
to any exact understanding of things, and help rather than correct our law-enforced schemes of fraudulent division,
and the false hypothesis of current political economy. To me it seems that the first lesson “God’s steward” should learn
is NOT TO STEAL. He will not be burdened then with administering what belongs to others. Now when one man, as
an Astor, Vanderbilt, or a great number of others, receives as daily wages for his services the entire wages of several
thousand men, in any of the more useful callings, the mere statement reveals a system so audacious, so utterly
defiant of any ethical or economic element, that criticism halts and investigation is discouraged. And yet no one
doubts that the wealth of the world is procured by the labor of men, or that it is useful service alone which creates
all economic quantities, and effects all increase of social wealth. And really there is nothing in the whole circle of
human industry but Work and its Wages. Land is the field of effort, of opportunity, and embraces all the materials
and forces which man applies for effecting the changes and growth of things to supply his wants and to minister to
his enjoyment. The fiction about the productivity of land without labor, the active agency of capital, etc., are simply
afterthoughts to buttress a baseless hypothesis, and perpetuate the mistakes of ignorance which have been found
beneficial to one class, to the deprivation of another.

Yet doubtless there is a natural difference between the actual product of the labor of individual men, and of such
difference economics must take account, and cannot ignore; for some men are more active and skillful than others;
soils vary in fertility; locations are differently situated, with respect to density of population; some men are more
abstemious than others; and some operations are more favorable to large combinations, and to the facilities of
co-operation, both in production and exchange. These differences however have not been able to produce the
absurd disparities in men’s wages with which we are confronted in our quasi-civilization, and could not of themselves
seriously distress or inconvenience any class or even the individual, but with corrective result. It is only by confounding
the two forms of increase, the difference in the compensation of these different classes that justification of the present
wholesale robbery of the procurers of wealth can be made to appear even plausible. Such crude categories of things,
and fallacious reasonings from half-stated premises would otherwise fail to mislead. These frightful disturbances of
“values in service” must be ascertained by careful analysis, not passed over by idle guesswork and vague generalizations.
Let us take up these differing problems in further detail. The average worker will tell us that his time is worth more
than that of some other fellow. If he has laid by some of his earnings, he will say that he has been abstinent, or
shrewd, or lucky; he has waited the full fruition of his toil instead of anticipating it and plucking the fruit half ripe.
Now I think we shall have to show this man that all this is wholly different from capitalistic increase, before we shall
arouse in his stolid mind a suspicion that the kind of increase he is justifying is not identical with that of the land
monopolist, the tariff protected and patent protected proprietor, or stockholder, in factory or bank. For the purpose of
this discussion we may accept the claim of our industrious and economical friend as sound without entering into nice
ethical distinctions. We shall then discover that it has not the slightest resemblance to the base on which rests the
monopoly price of things, the tribute that is exacted for the use of nature’s forces, and of a place to live and work in.

The appearance of similarity is only that of coincidence; as when the expenses of repairs, wear and tear of buildings,
fences, etc., exhaustion of fertility and various actual outlays, are charged with the pure rent of privilege; and as risk
with interest, and as service in transportation and delivery are added to and collected with speculative profits. It will
simplify this matter to state that really for all purposes of economic discussion, work and wages are the only integers.
Now begin at the savage state. Whatever the individual procures belongs to him, is the result of his effort, his wages.
Whether he captures game, destroys a foe and takes his belongings, or captures a member of another tribe, and
compels him to hunt, or serve him in any way, the thing enjoyed is sequent to his activity. Again if he be able to keep
another from the hunting ground, or any desirable location, he can command a tribute or refuse the privilege. This is
also consequent upon the exercise of personal force. But as society progresses, tribes become united in states or
nations, he will be compelled to yield his habit of obtaining goods by destroying the producer. In time also possession
of the slave will have to be given up; but he will still be enabled to gather his wages as landlord, by taking a large
share of the producer’s wages, by a right which society still recognizes, and is brutal enough to assist in enforcing.
But hereto we have not reached a point where one of the principles of political economy apply. The taking of the
savage from the foe he has destroyed has no place in exchange; nor can such transfer take place between master
and slave; for the master exacts by privilege the service of the slave; the slave has the duty of service to the master.
These transfers are savagely brutal, animals do not exchange. The relation of tenant to the landlord, is the same in
all essential particulars, and what takes place between them as landlord and tenant, is from this basis, as Macleod
points out: “There is simply the right of the landlord to receive rent, and of the tenant, the duty to pay rent.” It is
impossible to make an equation with monopolistic rent. Interest is the same as rent and account books in which
it is entered can only be balanced, by calling it service. But that which does not represent service is a false
entry. Profits on capital can only be disposed of by shifting to another account as “profit and loss,” even
when they more often represent service, than either ordinary payments of rent or interest.

It must be seen now that the difference in men’s productive capacity, choice of location, superior fertility of some
soils, etc., which would offset perceptible differences in wages, have no analogy to a power guaranteed by the
State to plunder producers and tax all industry for the emolument of a few. The economic differences, resulting
from skill, favored situations, fortunate finds, improvement of accidental opportunities and readier interpretation
of demand and supply, if not always in accord with ethical sentiment, will have a salutary influence on industry,
by stimulating the indolent and stupid to greater activity and care. But the rent, interest and profits begotten of
class laws, are as if a number of persons should go under equal freedom, to gather wild berries yet the one
who could gather most should have power to take from the ones who had gathered less; or to put a bar around
the most prolific bushes and make the rest pick on shares. Although what we term wealth must be regarded as
the wages of the work which procures it and which is inevitably co-operative in exchange, there are at present
different ways in which these wages are awarded. The wages received by one class are not the result of work
at all, except of a kind not now recognized as entitled to social sanction; but on the contrary are the wages of
the work of the robber or swindler and which, however arduous or exhausting, must be eliminated from any
rule of division which society can rightfully enforce. Monopolistic rent is a charge for service; but it is the
service of compelling idleness. Interest is for the service of hedging currency from commerce. Profit is
for the service of keeping the buyer and seller apart. By the confusion of thought that confounds the rent,
interest and profit, which are simply the wages of superior activity, prompt improvement of opportunity,
patient waiting and purposed abstinence, and which can hardly be expurgated in any rule of division,
is made to carry the whole burden of capitalistic thieving.

It seems idle to consider those in their higher moral aspect, until the wages of the legal thief are reduced to a
minimum, and relief is obtained from the outrages enforced by usurpation over the forces of nature, and control
of the place to work and the home of the worker. These tendencies under the giant monopolies of land, money
and labor can certainly have no explanation from any economic law, and yet instances may be pointed out,
where early labor expended in selecting and improving the farm, the workshop and factory, and caring for the
same comes back to one at length in the form of rent, interest or profit. If such payment were for something
done, or even for some fortunate result, it could be treated as an economic quantity, since the result or sequence
to some service rendered. And to fail to distinguish between this and the monopoly-forced tribute which goes
under these names, is simply to abandon the whole ground to the robber class and admit that they hold by the
same right as the man whose natural wages are augmented by the exercise of care, by avoiding the overcrowded
field, or by superior strength and skill. I am constrained to say I do not see why the Autonomist should condemn
rent, usury and profits, when they are not the result of unwarranted interference of the State, in matters within
the determination of the individuals co-operating or exchanging with each other. Admitting the theory, which the
economists Giffen, Atkinson, Wells and Sumner have I think conclusively shown, that freedom of exchange tends
to equalize profits and reduce all commodities to labor cost of production, there still remains the inequalities of
division, which exchange does not correct or even touch, except incidentally. The only canon of division the
accepted teaching admits, makes award to rent, wages and profits—including interest on money. But this is
only an attempt to synthesise a brute’s desire with the crude perceptions of barbarous ignorance.

Rent and profit are both misleading terms, which really express the wages of the landlord and usurer only. Freedom
of exchange can not reach this inequality because it can only affect division in trifling ways, since productions
cannot be exchanged till division has taken place and the property or possession of the shares of the co-operative
product adjusted. “That is what I told you,” says the State Socialist; “laissez faire is liberty to rob the worker.” Let
us see. Since laissez faire does tend to equalize prices and compensations, which are within the compass of
exchange, may there not be a broader field where freedom will also tend to reduce to equity and justice those
inequities of division which spring from forceful repression and coercion? If Economics are supplemented by
Isonomics, the law of equal privileges and equal opportunities, access to raw material and choice of occupations,
co-operation would then become voluntary. It is not co-operation in production alone which will improve the
unequal sharing of co-operators. We have such co-operation already in excess in many avocations. With equal
freedom of exchange, and equal privilege in using the places, materials and forces of nature, mutual advantage
would incite to more intelligent combination of effort. Reciprocation is the conservative force of social affairs.
By it inequalities are constantly reduced, from whatever cause arising. It is the basis of economics, the law
of equal freedom; of isonomics, the law of equal privilege, and of ethics, the law of equal duty. These laws
are not antagonistic forces, but co-ordinate if not identical. Mutuality is the key to the harmonies of social
life, as is the tonic to sound movements, or rhythm to the flow of liquids. Excess or overaction on either
side beget reaction. Egoism and Altruism meet in reciprocity. Unenlightened extremes on either side
render progress difficult and painful; but free, intelligent interplay gives orderly advancement to the
social life, and nobler qualities to the individual growth.